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The dimensions of women's autonomy and their relationship to maternal health care utilization were investigated in a probability sample of 300 women in Varanasi, India. We examined the determinants of women's autonomy in three areas: control over finances, decision-making power, and freedom of movement. After we control for age, education, household structure, and other factors, women with closer ties to natal kin were more likely to have greater autonomy in each of these three areas. Further analyses demonstrated that women with greater freedom of movement obtained higher levels of antenatal care and were more likely to use safe delivery care. The influence of women's autonomy on the use of health care appears to be as important as other known determinants such as education.

Son preference has persisted in the face of sweeping change these incentives without more direct efforts by economic and social changes in China, India, and the the state and civil society to increase the flexibility of the Republic of Korea. The authors attribute this to their kinship system such that daughters and sons can be similar family systems, which generate strong perceived as being more equally valuable. Much can be disincentives to raise daughters while valuing adult done to this end through social movements, legislation, women's contributions to the household. Urbanization, and the mass media. female education, and employment can only slowly

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For years, sex ratios at birth kept rising in South Korea despite rapid development. We show that this was not an anomaly: underlying son preference fell with development, but the effect of son preference on sex ratios at birth rose until the mid-1990s as a result of improved sex-selection technology. Now South Korea leads Asia with a declining sex ratio at birth. We explore how son preference was affected by development and by public policy. Decomposition analysis indicates that development reduced son preference primarily through triggering normative changes across society-rather than just in individuals whose socioeconomic circumstances had changed. The cultural underpinnings of son preference in preindustrial Korea were unraveled by industrialization and urbanization even as public policies sought to uphold the patriarchal family system. Our results suggest that child sex ratios in China and India may decline before those countries reach South Korean levels of development, since the governments of both countries vigorously promote normative change to reduce son preference. Copyright 2007 The Population Council, Inc..